All the innumerable forms of human spirituality center on the most magnificent of human capacities: the power to commune. The manifestations of this power are myriad and diverse. Congregations hear sermons, we hear moving music, we read and recite the weighty words of prophets and sages, Heaven hears our prayers, and in Islam God speaks […]
Easy There Tiger Born for more than this, drift Easy there, tiger, you’re hungry. Shine. But tigers can’t fly… How’d you do it? The Fundamentals Big cat like you, up there, peering down for your prey Missed a lion higher up—snatched You’re a part of the Pride now On a cloud atop a cloud […]
(English calligraphy, line-varying fountain pen on parchment) In this piece, I experiment for the first time with copperplate calligraphy, a font whose curves and sways make it somewhat akin to Arabic script. I have used the placement of the words to symbolize the essence of Mohja Kahf’s poem, Little Mosque Poems. In the poem, Kahf describes […]
Ascent to Salat At every rung, my hands are torn and burned My heart is wrung, my earth-bound spirit burned And less and less, my armor weighs me down Its metal melts away, as flesh is burned No wings to take me higher, nervous flame The ladder to the pyre leaves me […]
(oil pastel) Islam is a religion and a culture characterized by vast and abundant diversity in ritual, practice, and interpretation, which has resulted in a rich and inspiring collection of cultural manifestations which all hold the Qur’an and the core of Islam in common. As Daftary writes in Diversity in Islam: Communities of Interpretation, “almost every Muslim […]
(photography) In Topkapi Scroll, Gulru Necipoglu describes 19th-century Orientalist conceptions of architecture in the Muslim world, based on the “view that architecture and the decorative arts were determined by climate and racial character,” (Necipoglu 62). Intellectuals at the time observed what they characterized as a unique racial style of Arabs: “The innate spirituality and mysticism […]
(Arabic calligraphy, brush) To Muslims, the power of the Qur’an goes beyond the written text. The true beauty of this holy text is expressed only in its sound during oral recitation, when the voice of the reciter mimics the voice of God which revealed the same words to the Prophet. Indeed, as Kristina Nelson points […]